Philip Y. Kao PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

ecause they have to pass out medication (e.g. after a meal for some residents or first
thing in the morning for others). First floor residents treat their rooms as apartments;
they are free to come and go as they wish. Many of them have cars, but no one in the
CCRC has their own kitchen. At first, Betty moved to Tacoma Pastures in order to be with
her husband, who subsequently fell ill and died rather abruptly. After his death, Betty
couldn’t stay in her room on the first floor. She spent the majority of her time wandering
the common room and the public entrance space. Betty’s insistence that her husband
was still alive, and that she had to locate him, caused the CCRC management concern.
Her own adult children, who I often saw come and go rather swiftly, agreed to have their
mother move into Memory Care. It was an embarrassing situation for them, and this
became clear to me in the way her son and daughter came and went abruptly—usually
on Saturday mornings. They came to change her personal laundry, but not once did I
witness them really engaging with her and/or her fellow residents. When I approached
her son in the hallway, he said that one of the full-time caregivers was just great, and
that Betty was in good hands.
In Tacoma Pastures, no one ever explicitly said that Betty needed to move because she
required more care. Instead, several nurses and caregivers stated that Betty was a risk to
herself; she could wander off at any time. Before Betty moved, she was on the first floor,
but she did not interact with other residents. After moving to Memory Care, Betty had to
share a living space with others. Being confined in the locked unit, and embedded in the
system of care meant that Betty had transitioned. Yet, transitioning from what to what
was still a question that Betty did not figure out, and this proved to be rather alienating
for her, especially since she was always ready, with purse in hand, to seek answers.
Mary
As a part time caregiver, I worked on the third (Memory Care) and fourth (Assisted
Living) floors. Mary and Dennis Johnston moved into my section on the fourth floor, and
fell under my care about three months after I had been offered a position as a caregiver.
Before this, I was a volunteer and worked with the recreation department, visiting
residents throughout Tacoma Pastures. As a volunteer, I devoted most of my time to the
CHR section of the CCRC campus, visiting people in order to talk to them and keep them
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